Introduction

The Nokia army of touchscreen smartphones gets larger by the hour and the Nokia N97 mini is surely one of the most interesting new recruits. The Finnish company has obviously reconsidered its priories and now focuses on optimization, rather than expansion with its flagships.

Nokia N97 mini official photos

The original Nokia N97 was the first sign of that as it hardly offered any ground-breaking features, instead relaying on the good all-round performance. However the first high-end S60 touchscreen handset left enough room for another similar handset in the portfolio and Nokia feel that its downsized version is enough to fill the gap.

The N97 mini has quite a task on its hands, constantly being compared to the moe high ranking Nokia N97 even though it comes later to the market. As usually happens in such cases, the price difference that would have been present if both handsets were launched simultaneously is reduced and the balance of powers has shifted.

Nokia N97 mini at ours

Still the reduced display (and mostly body size) is a welcome change for many users, who used to find the Nokia N97 intolerably bulky. We certainly hope it's got a few tricks up its sleeves so it can put up the original N97 a good fight and differentiate enough beyond size and pricing. Well, we're about to check that and much more in one of our trademark reviews, starting with the unboxing on the next page.